Katy Perry glams up GQ cover, defends geisha furor

Katy Perry has expertly navigated a career that has shaped her into a sex symbol for males in addition to a figure of female empowerment for young girls — at least that's what her latest GQ profile aims to argue.

The 29-year-old Grammy nominee poses in a skimpy striped one-piece for GQ's February cover and opened up to reporter Amy Wallace about, well, just about everything. Perry goes glam in several of the mag's pin-up-inspired photos, smoldering in the suggestive come-hither spread.

Here are a few key quotes from the "Unconditionally" singer's interview, which took place just before Perry's controversial American Music Awards performance in November.

On why she donned a powdered "Yellow Face" as a geisha for the performance: "I was thinking about unconditional love, and I was thinking: Geishas are basically, like, the masters of loving unconditionally." Yes, she said that. The pop vixen also called Japan "the capital of adorableness."

On the race-fueled maelstrom that followed the performance: Perry said she respects the debate but believes that her critics misunderstood. "All I was trying to do is just give a very beautiful performance about a place that I have so much love for and find so much beauty in, and that was exactly where I was coming from, with no other thought besides it."

On her enviable figure: "I lay on my back one night and looked down at my feet, and I prayed to God. I said, 'God, will you please let me have boobs so big that I can't see my feet when I'm lying down?'" Then, at age 11, something phenomenal happened: "God answered my prayers. I had no clue they would fall into my armpits eventually."

On plastic surgery: I've never had any plastic surgery. Not a nose, not a chin, not a cheek, not a [breast]. So my messages of self-empowerment are truly coming from an au naturel product."

On her beliefs (Perry grew up in a fiercely Pentecostal household as the daughter of two traveling ministers): "I see everything through a spiritual lens," she says. "I believe in a lot of astrology. I believe in aliens .... I look up into the stars and I imagine: How self-important are we to think that we are the only life-form? I mean, if my relationship with Obama gets any better, I'm going to ask him that question. It just hasn't been appropriate yet."

On her relationship with President Obama: "I might have won Wisconsin for him," she said. "Actually, I didn't do too much, but he called on me a couple of times. Which was very nice."

On her relationship with her parents: They're "oddballs, but I love them."

On getting back together with singer John Mayer, with whom she's also collaborated musically: "I think that I needed to grow up." The singer emphasized that they were just dating and that she's "just having a wonderful experience with a wonderful guy. There's no rush."

On Jeff Buckley's album, "Grace": "Love that record so much." Why? because she lost her virginity while listening to it at 16 in the front seat of a Volvo sedan.